Mechanical characterization of the rat and mice skin tissues using histostructural and uniaxial data

The skin tissue has been shown to behave like a nonlinear anisotropic material. This study was aimed to employ a constitutive fiber family equation to characterize the nonlinear anisotropic mechanical behavior of the rat and mice skin tissues in different anatomical locations, including the abdomen and back, using histostructural and uniaxial data. The rat and mice skin tissues were excised from the animals' body and then the histological analyses were performed on each skin type to determine the mean fiber orientation angle. Afterward, the preconditioned skin tissues were subjected to a series of quasi-static axial and circumferential loads until the incidence of failure. The crucial role of fiber orientation was explicitly added into a proposed strain energy density function. The material coefficients were determined using the constrained nonlinear optimization method based on the axial and circumferential extension data of the rat and mice samples at different anatomical locations. The material coefficients of the skins were given with R(2) ≥ 0.998. The results revealed a significant load-bearing capacity and stiffness of the rat abdomen compared to the rat back tissues. In addition, the mice abdomen showed a higher stiffness in the axial direction in comparison with circumferential one, while the mice back displayed its highest stiffness in the circumferential direction. The material coefficients of the rat and mice skin tissues were determined and well compared to the experimental data. The optimized fiber angles were also compared to the experimental histological data, and in all cases less than 11.85% differences were observed in both the skin tissues.